Misbegotten Past
by Phillip
Summary: Davis must come to terms with his inability to take drastic action to save the world, and may be given a final chance to correct that mistake. My first story, please be gentle.


A/N. I guess I need a disclaimer that says I don't own digimon even though that should be obvious.

__

Drip, drip, drip.

Davis Motomiya reluctantly opened his eyes at the feeling, the tiny pitter-pattering of water that splashed across his forehead and created a trickle that ran between his eyebrows, down his nose and into his open mouth.

__

Drip.

He shifted, suddenly aware of the uncomfortable pressure against his lower back. But even as he was able to transfer some of the pressure from his spine, he found that a similar tightness against his chest prevented him from eliminating it altogether. And it was dark, really quite dark. What had just happened?

__

"Davis! Davis! Damn you, close it!"

That had been Tai's voice. He and Tai. The two with the closest bond to the digital world. Upon their shoulders had rested the ultimate decision. The responsibility to decide when the union between the two worlds could no longer be salvaged, and to forever sever the bonds. Tai had stood at the lever marked (+) and had already thrown his into the 'off' position. Now Davis looked down at his own lever, marked (-). His hand was on the handle, but he had yet to release it.

His right arm was pinned beneath him, and was tingling as though he'd struck his funny bone. So instead he lifted his left arm onto whatever it was that was pinning him to the ground and weighing so heavily on his chest. It was this weight that concerned him most at the moment. It was a crushing sort of weight and rested directly atop his sternum, making it quite difficult for him to breathe.

His hand came into contact with the catalyst for the intense pressure. It was a long beam of metal, jagged across the edges, and was wedged against him in a way that made it quite impossible to move. So he looked instead, and found that it was not only a single large piece of metal that was covering him, but rather a copious amount of the twisted and wrecked material.

__

"Davis, we all knew it might come to this! We trusted you with this! You have to pull that lever and close the gate!"

He was frozen, and now looked across to Tai on the other platform. He couldn't even hear the words that were coming out of the other boy's mouth. On the enormous screen in front of him a massive array of images were displayed simultaneously. The armies of this world standing against the armies of that one. But of all the images, his eyes were drawn to one in particular.

The three were still running towards the digital port. They had been the human world's last envoys to the digital one. Matt Ishida, Sora Takenouchi and Yolei Inoue. The last hope to stop the madness and restore the relationship to what it had been before the coming of Esdraelmon. And now, evidently, they had failed. That much was made clear by the surging horde of hostile digimon on their heels as they approached the gate. How could it have come to this?

The sound of thunder was in the distance, and the rainwater continued to drip onto his forehead from somewhere above. "Help!" he shouted weakly, unable to free himself and now finding that air was becoming more and more difficult to draw into his lungs. Hopefully Tai was still up there. If not, Mimi had been just outside the building and waiting for the three envoys to return. But the explosion. Did either of them stay to witness the explosion when the armies of the digital world had fired the Pandora Gun through the ports?

The already weak light in his eyes was now beginning to fade into complete darkness, and he struggled to hold on to consciousness. He was dimly aware that, having been caught in an explosion of a magnitude to level the entire building, he must have suffered some physical injuries as well. He couldn't feel much pain right now, but had read stories where people in his situation had survived for days with horrific injuries that were somehow masked by the natural painkillers in their blood. He wondered how badly off he really was.

__

He was frozen to the spot, overwhelmed by what he was about to do. He would forever cut the link between his own world and the digital one. With the coming of Esdraelmon, the digimon had finally come together under one ruler. There was great debate in human society about how this rule came about, and came about so quickly and completely, but the debate had mostly ended when the assimilation had begun.

Davis and the rest of the chosen children had their own private beliefs. There was some sort of coercion or control by the creature over the rest of his race. It was not only the malevolent creatures that had flocked to his banner: Every digimon now obeyed his commands. Even their friends, the allies with whom they had fought side-by-side for so very long, were now almost mindless in their veneration of the creature. Even his own Veemon had gone so far as to disown him, with a sharp retort that he never again would bow to human domination.

And that had clinched it for Davis. That was not like Veemon, or any of their other friends. But it could not change the fact that the creatures were now merging the two worlds into one, driven by Esdraelmon's mad vision of enslaving the human race as they had once 'enslaved' his own. And with each passing week, the armies of the digital world ate more and more of the human world and increased the range and effectiveness of the mad ruler's Pandora Gun.

But still. But still Davis could not bring himself to throw the negative switch. He could not believe that they had fallen this far and this fast. He could not bring himself to forever deprive himself of the company of his digimon friends and his access to that place. This was all wrong. There must have been some sort of mistake. He would not believe evil of them, not of all of them. They would not fail his belief in them.

"Davis! Do it now! Do it n--"

There was a dim glow not unlike a blue flash of lightning outside of his steel prison. The storm outside was coming closer. He'd probably have to wait it out before anyone came for him. But he was so weak and tired, and the weight on his chest was growing heavier all the time.

Suddenly there came the sound of shifting metal from above. "Hurry up and grab this thing!" a female voice filtered down to his ears. "He's somewhere down here and we don't have that much time!"

"Seventy-seven seconds," another voice shouted, this one of another girl or of a preadolescent boy. It was difficult to tell from this distance.

Davis shifted once again. "Help!" he demanded. "I'm down here! Get me out!"

"Shut up and save your breath, Mr. Motomiya!" the first voice returned. "We know where you are. You just keep yourself alive until we get there."

It wasn't the answer he was expecting, and seemed strange to him. Keep himself alive? As if he had any intention of doing anything else. He didn't recognize the voice, but right now who it was didn't matter to him in the least. Not if they could get him of there.

"Thirty-three seconds," the second voice called again. "Faster, Miya, or we're going back without him."

"No great loss to me!" the first answered.

Davis was taken aback from a moment. The name wasn't familiar to him, and she sounded as if rescuing him was the last thing that she wanted to do. It all seemed very odd to him.

And then a face appeared over him. At least, he assumed it was a face, but in the darkness and the way the shadow fell across it he couldn't be certain. It almost looked as though the person had a mask of a sort covering his (or her) face. "Don't move an inch," the face ordered, and by the sound of the voice it was the girl Miya.

There was a bright flash of light, and Davis was alarmed to see sparks coming from the area around his chest. Frightened he made as if to sit up, only to find that the beam was still pinning his body beneath it. "Stop! What are you doing?" he demanded.

"I said don't move!" the other hissed. "Unless you want me to burn you to a crisp with this thing. Like I said, it's no great loss to me."

"Seventeen, Miya! Get it off of him and let's go! I'm not getting stuck back here where Lady Paradox can just wink me out of existence!"

"Got it!" the girl exclaimed now, snapping off the blue flame in her hand as the beam covering Davis split in two. She grabbed him under each arm and dragged him from the wreckage, and Davis caught a brief glimpse of the devastation that the Pandora Gun had caused.

__

Oh no! Mimi!

The land was now barren, scorched as if from some great heat. Davis had seen the Gun fired only one time, and have never seen the impact of its explosion. It was almost as if an incendiary bomb had been dropped on the little building, smashing the steel as if it had been a tiny model house built from matchsticks. The concrete buildings surrounding the place were little more than ash, and even the surface of the road had been blasted into a fine, black powder.

Davis tried to stand on his own, but faltered and was forced to fall across the shoulder of the girl who had pulled him from the wreckage. And now, though there were stars in front of his eyes, he could see that his first impression had been more or less correct. The girl had a tight, form-fitting mask of a grayish material covering her entire head save the mouth and the eyes, which was instead covered by a black mesh. She wore a belt across her waistline, and in a holster at her side was what appeared to be a small handgun.

She turned to him, and the hollow look that the mask gave her eyes was haunting to him. "Now freeze, Mr. Motomiya. And this time, do as you're told. Else, I won't be held responsible." She turned away from him, shouting. "Hiro, how much time?"

Davis turned his head to the other figure, who was dressed just as the first. Smaller, and since Miya had named him, he decided that it was indeed a very young boy. "Now!" he shouted.

At that moment a dazzling sphere of blue light opened in front of the trio, the same shade of light that Davis had seen from beneath the collapsed building. And with a sudden rush it was upon the three, sweeping them up in its wake. Davis felt as though he was thrown forward at an incredible speed and lurched forward, heaving violently and having the displeasure of feeling the contents of his stomach burst forth from his mouth and into the wildly rushing air in his face.

He felt his knees go weak, and he was supported only by the girl's arm beneath his own. She leaned forward and hissed in his ear.

"Bastard! I told you not to move!"

~~

When he opened his eyes again, he found that he was once again on his back. Only now, instead of darkness, he was blinded by a dazzling white light that shown down upon his face. He could move freely, but the pain in his back remained. He moved to sit, only to find that to move at all caused an agonizing feeling in his extremities. Instead, he lay still and rolled his head to the side.

"Doctor? He's awake."

There was movement at his feet, and now a very tall man moved into his field of view. The light was still very bright, but it seemed that there was something familiar about the other. Something that he couldn't quite put his finger on.

"Hello, Davis. It's been a long time. Well a long time for me, anyway. Don't try to move, please. You're still in pretty bad shape."

Davis closed his eyes to relieve some of the pressure on his head. "Where--" He winced. Talking was worse than looking, but he had to ask anyway. "Where am I?"

The tall man looked at some sort of monitor at his side. "You're in our medical facilities, Davis. A hospital, if you like. You very nearly didn't make it. Almost made us go through an awful lot of trouble for no reason."

"Why does my back hurt so much?"

The man smiled, and Davis was aghast. _That face. _"Your back? Mmm. Well, it'd say its probably the fact that you cracked one of your vertebrae when that building came down on you. Or the shrapnel. We've pulled out almost half a pound of the stuff, and there's still more in there that we can't get at. But be calm. We can fix the worst of it."

Now Davis's head was swimming. "Who are you?"

The smile was still on the man's face, but now he paused. "Last question, then you sleep. Who do your eyes tell you I am?"

~~

It was several long naps and painful operations (which Davis thankfully did not remember) later when he found himself being led down a long, bare metallic corridor. The girl Miya had returned and was his guide, and as he walked behind her he admired the way that the form-fitting material of her clothing moved with every step that she did. She had a fine figure, even if the gray fabric covered every inch of it.

Then and without warning the girl whirled on him, forcing him against the wall as she pulled the small gun from the holster at her side as held it firmly against his throat. He was still in pain from the operations, and gave a groan as he slammed into the metal of the side of the corridor. She pulled off the tight mask and hurled it to the side, and again Davis reeled back in amazement. "You? You're--?"

"Listen to me, Motomiya, and listen to me well. We're all alone now, and I could easily kill you without thinking twice about it. I'll be punished severely for it, but I can live through that with the satisfaction of knowing that your blood is on my hands. I have a thousand and one reasons to want you dead, so I suggest you keep your eyes in your head and not give me one thousand and two. There's someone here who wants you alive very badly, and he'll be very upset if I murder you after he went through all the trouble of sending me back to pull your slimy ass from the grave. So let's just live with what we have, hmm? You follow, I lead. Look at the walls, look at the floor or the ceiling, but don't look at me. Else I will hurt you."

Davis swallowed as the girl moved away from him and placed the tight mask back upon her head. He stepped away from the wall, and despite the warning stared after her. _Miya?_ The resemblance was more than uncanny, and it confused him greatly. But he did follow, though at a more respectful distance now. He couldn't understand her overt hostility towards him, nor why she had saved his life if she disliked him that much. He didn't recall ever having met someone with that name before.

Now the two stopped at a metallic door, unremarkable from any other dozens of others that lined the corridor. Miya pushed it in, and motioned for him to follow.

Davis stepped inside the dark room and looked around. Despite what it appeared from the outside it was very large, and at the far end there was a flickering light that implied some sort of television or other electronic device. He waited.

"Go. He's waiting for you," Miya ordered, then turned on a heel and existed the room.

Davis turned after her. "Who-?" he started, but then was speaking to metal as the door slammed in his face.

He frowned, then started a slow march over to the far side where the television was flickering. The room was mainly barren, but for a very basic set of necessities. There was a figure seated in a chair before the screen, though he could discern little of it besides the thin fingers drumming across the arm of his seat, and he approached silently with a sense of foreboding in the back of his mind. It couldn't all be coincidence.

Davis had been more interested in the figure in the chair, but as he approached his eyes were drawn to the screen in front of him. On that screen a horrific scene was playing out. There were a pair of digimon on that screen, one a Leomon and one whose species that he could not immediately identify as its back was to the screen. Possibly an Angemon. But what horrified him was that between the pair and being dragged along the ground was a human figure, who himself was in a horrible state.

It was Cody.

Davis recognized the youngest of the chosen children instantly, even though the clothes had been torn from his body and his face was blood-stained and bruised. He was speaking, but because there was no audio from the screen Davis could not understand what he was saying. But he could see, as Cody opened his mouth, that many of his teeth were either missing or broken.

The scene widened, and now Davis became sick to his stomach as he watched the two digimon lay Cody's limp form upon the form of a large, wooden cross. With cruel efficiency the pair held the helpless boy down and nailed both of his wrists to the crossplank, then moved on to his feet. "No!" Davis shouted, moving towards the screen and suddenly heedless of the figure in the chair. "Stop it!"

But the image did not stop, and continued on as the smallest of the chosen was affixed to the wood and the cross was pulled up to stand alone under what appeared to be a noontime sun. The figure of Cody on the screen seemed to gag and was evidently trembling as he struggled to draw breath into his lungs.

"Thus are we reminded of our powerlessness," the figure, the man seated in the chair murmured at Davis's back.

Davis wheeled on him. He stepped forward, eyes wide and grabbed the other by the shirt collar. The man's orangish hair was very wispy and he was quite frail. His eyes were bright and gave the impression of youth, but an impression that conflicted strongly with the remainder of his appearance.

"Stop them!" Davis shouted into the man's ear. "Do something to stop that! That's my friend!"

The man was limp in his grasp, and he reeled away from the shout. "Put me down, Davis!" he demanded. "Do you think I care any less than you do? There is nothing do be done! What you are seeing now happened almost twenty years ago! Do you want to know what happens? Do you want to know how he suffers and slowly dies over the next two days? How various digimon show up to pelt him with stones almost every hour of that time? Or shall we skip ahead to the last day when he finally dies with our names on his lips? Put me down!"

Davis stepped back and literally dropped the other into the chair. "My God, it is you! Izzy! What the hell happened to you?"

A/N. Even though this should be obvious too I think this will be continued. Leave a review if you feel like telling me that I really need help writing. I already know it of course. DOK4, Phillip.


End file.
